📸 PhotoPhoto: Nevada Fish & Wildlife Office · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons Source
Devils Hole pupfish
Cyprinodon diabolis (Devils Hole pupfish · Devils Hole pupfish)
💡 Everyday Comparisons for Size, Mass & Speed
- 💡 Its maximum length of 4.3 cm is about 1.6 times the diameter of a Korean 500-won coin (2.65 cm) (Comparison).
- 💡 The U.S. National Park Service counted 263 individuals in its fall 2022 survey, reporting the highest number in 19 years.
- 💡 Because its entire habitat consists only of the upper 80 feet (about 24 m) of the cavern and the shallow rock shelf at the entrance, the National Park Service introduces it as the vertebrate with the smallest geographic range on Earth.
Reference standards: coach bus ~12 m, mid-size car ~4.9 m, compact car ~1 t, basketball hoop 3.05 m, credit card 8.56 cm.
📖 1. Overview
The Devils Hole pupfish is a small fish around 4 cm long that lives only in a single water-filled cavern pool in the Nevada desert of the United States.
🦴 2. Anatomy & Morphology
It is tiny, with an average length of 0.9 inches (about 2.3 cm) and a maximum record of 1.7 inches (about 4.3 cm). It lives in warm cavern water where the temperature stays at 91.4–93.3 °F (about 33–34 °C).
🔍 3. Ecology & Behavior
It mainly feeds on algae and small invertebrates growing on a limestone rock shelf. FishBase notes that the entire population feeds and spawns within an area of about 20 m square on this rock shelf.
🇰🇷 4. Connection to Korea
No direct record connecting this species to Korea has been found.
📚 Sources & References
- • IUCN Red List CR (2014) — https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/6149/15362335
- • IUCN Red List category CR — latest assessment at iucnredlist.org
- • catalogueoflife.org — 33HLW
- • iucnredlist.org — 15362335
- • wikidata.org — Q301137
- • commons.wikimedia.org — File:Cyprinodon diabolis.jpg
- • fws.gov — devils-hole-pupfish-cyprinodon-diabolis
- • nps.gov — devils-hole-fall-2022.htm
- • fishbase.se — Cyprinodon-diabolis.html
- • Silhouette: PhyloPic — author not recorded · CC0 1.0 (Congeneric silhouette — Megalops cyprinoides)
Recorded dimensions are widely cited representative estimates from public literature and may vary by study or specimen.